Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He remembers when the Salt was just the sea, blue and cold and beautiful and full of fish. He remembers a small hotel by the beach (room service, smooth walls painted soft green, running water, a shower, the indoor pool downstairs, wobbly suitcase wheels rolling over gleaming linoleum, it was so normal and now it's all gone, and the stuff of legend, at that), and spending a summer there with Jessie after their marriage, and then again right before the Sprog was born, and he remembers the ever-rumble of waves (kaa-hush, kaa-hush, kaa-hush, how glorious), and the way the saltwater would dry on his skin, and the way the sun would turn Jessie's skin dark and hair pale, and the way sand seemed wonderful (soft and warm and soothing, easy to wash away later, soft enough to fall asleep in) instead of terrible. He remembers.

No one else alive knows the sound of waves. No one else has ever been in a hotel, or had painted walls, or a real shower, or seen a pool. They've never seen a garden, either, not one that wasn't full of scraggly, tasteless vegetables. They've never seen flowers.

Jessie kept flowers. She was so good at it, too. The boxes by the window were so full of blooms.

(I should have left, he thinks. While there were still waves on the sea, I should have left this place for somewhere that could still hold the green.)

The closest thing to that sound is usually thunder, when a heat storm kicks up the sands, but there is also the roar of many engines. Up close, of course, it's a terrible sound, but from a distance, it can sound just a bit like the sea.

Max can pick that sound up faster than Dog ever did. (He misses Dog. He misses all dogs. Maybe there are still dogs in the world. Maybe he can find one and keep it alive and maybe make it happy because nothing is better than a happy dog. Hell, at this point, he'll take a vaguely friendly cat.) He can also hear, not so unlike the cries of seagulls, the whooping and screeching of the mad scavs tracking him.

Well, shit, he thinks.

And he so drives.

Without technology to make even the smallest people feel powerful and self-sufficient, the realization that men are not much by their own right tends to make one afraid, especially while surrounded by the rubble of some dehydrated apocalypse.

Max remembers that feeling setting in sort of late. Because the world wasn't all dust and rubble, in the beginning. People still lived in their houses, and had their families, and there were still stores and hospitals and cops, like him. The sea wasn't the Salt quite yet. The Wasting Sicknesses hadn't set in. There were just a whole bunch of idiots taking advantage of bad times, tearing up the roads and vandalizing every place they came to. Stealing and pillaging, like some barbarians out of history books, except these were wearing leather gear instead of goat furs and riding motorcycles instead of war horses. And every single one of them thought they were the shit.

It had seemed like the worst thing that could happen, at the time, but he thought it was temporary. He was a cop. He had seen things go south before, especially with the water wars and all that. So it was bad, sure, and things would never be the same again, but it would get better. World War II was also very, very bad, and many, many people died horribly but, despite the name, that wasn't the end of the world. And neither was this. The world could not possibly be so unfixably broken. That only happened in movies.

Then Jessie and his boy died (were murdered, thoughtlessly, for nothing) and nothing got fixed.

But the world didn't revolve around him, and he knew that losing his wife and son didn't mean the world was ending. Everyone lost people and the Earth kept spinning.

No, he didn't realize that the world was ending until later, when he saw every farm abandoned, all the crops warped and withered, and the ground soured by contaminated water. When he could drive for a week and more without seeing a single living person- that's when it set in.

That's when the end of the world caught up to him.

The car rolls. It'll be fine, he can tell. It's sort of like him, that way. He can't remember ever having to replace an important part, and it always comes back to him no matter how many other people drive it away.

He's dead. He's definitely dead. He hears the deafening grind of his vertebrae all getting too friendly with each other as his back compresses and bends. And then there's cool, blessed darkness for a second, maybe two; maybe even a lucky three.

But he's back up with a snap of bones righting themselves, coughing dust and blood and exhaust, and he tells these idiots with their stupid paint and their stupid shaved heads,

"Piss off!"

They cackle at him. They're insane. So is he, but these guys are absolutely coo-coo for Coco Puffs, and even he can't say that about himself. Not yet.

They stink like they're sick. They probably all are. He's heard people speak of half-life, and he thought it was just because normal humans can't live as long anymore when the world's just so unrelenting on the mortal body, but maybe he was wrong. Is this what they were talking about? Their bones smell wrong. Rotten. Is this a Wasting Sickness? (He really misses the internet. So many questions.)

He breathes in the dust. It's dry and dead. No life, none at all. Even the bacteria is thinned out. But there might be a cockroach around somewhere.

His lungs collapse and it's all dark again for awhile.

Yeah, his skin doesn't like getting inked. The tattoo will be gone in a day. Suck it.

Blood and water spill from his heart and lungs out of his mouth. They sit and watch him for awhile, thinking he'll die and then they'll eat him, but he doesn't because he won't, so they shrug it off and go about their business again.

He smells good greens and clear water somewhere up above the smoke and oil, and it cuts a spearing line through the reek of death. All these boys are covered in some sort of toxic paint, he can smell it, and it's filling them with lumps and ruining their guts so they get too sick to process their food. They need to be clean.

"Go to the ocean," he says, rasping to the light and flinching from a ghost at the corner of his eye, "go to the sea and wash it away. Cut the lumps out. Let the salt pull the infection. Fish'll eat the dead cells away. Be clean."

It hurts his mouth to say as much. He might have bitten his own tongue in half during the crash. It's fine now but a regrown part always feels new and full of sting for awhile.

"Kamikrazy. Might be a Full Life, but he's fanged up in the head."

The ink won't stay and he barely feels the needle but when he hears the sizzle of hot iron, well, he knows that would heal too, but he's in no mood to be cattle.

He runs.

He know he probably won't make it out, not yet, but he needs to see this place he's in, if he wants to get out later. And, and, the most important part, is that he needs to find the green, because if there's green then there must be good water and good earth, they must have hidden some away here, somehow.

He finds it through the fire and the filth, passes his car on the way (it always comes back to him, so he doesn't worry), and almost doesn't realize he's found it until a mist of fresh, cool water covers his face. He breathes it in and his bones find some of their steel again. The green curls towards him, reaching, reaching, for what he can offer it.

A pale vine curls around his outstretched fingers.

And then he's running.

The ghosts make it difficult.

They're not really ghosts, of course. Ghosts aren't real. Some of his Kin called them Spirits, or just Others. They take the faces and voices of the dead. Being able to See them is a curse, without a doubt, because the most of them are mean, sadistic beasts, out to drive a Seeing man mad. But they've been known to be helpful. Max even knows a few.

He doesn't know any of these Others. They seem less like Others and more like true echoes of the dead, crying out as they are, but he knows better. Because these Others call to him by name. They know what he is.

It's odd that they care.

Almost as odd as the urge to fling himself out of a hole and into the sky.

Can he fly? Has any of his kind flown before, grown wings and ascended? Would they be wings of wax?

Probably not, is the answer to all of those things, but Max is swinging back and forth on an iron hook now, wondering if he should take the easy way out and drop himself to the stone. It would be too quick to hurt and he would go splat and some of those hungry humans down there would probably steal his clothes and some of his bones too, but it would be so easy, wouldn't it? Falling is a good way to die, once the fear is gone, and it is, it is. The fear is gone. Falling is almost pleasant.

He doesn't fall.

If only.

He's met false gods before. The apocalypse bred them in droves. Power-hungry havoc-heads, trying to balance order and chaos as if they meant anything to the world. Did they not realize that they, too, would become dust? They were mortal. He could smell it.

(This is not meant to imply that he is a god, because he isn't, but he's definitely something of the supernatural breed. They all are.)

The Humungus was one of those idiots, tough like steel and mean for blood, who probably had some heritage in him that made him a little more or a touch less than the average human, but death was in him, actively wearing him down. He was nothing, in the end. He's dead now, for certain. Max imagines that someone probably ate him and sucked the last trickle of power from his bones. Maybe that gave them a few extra years, or kept them from getting sick. Maybe that just drove them mad because you're really not supposed to eat people. Although, when food's so scarce, it's worth parasites and bloodborne pathogens, right?

And Auntie Entity, well, he knew she was like him. She knew too many things about the pre-apocalypse, spoke of it like her own, and she was just a touch too smart in manipulation. Not smart enough, of course, but the power she had over the crowds, the fact that she managed to get that power in the first place, was indicative of a fair bit more than she admitted. Maybe she was not quite his kind, but she was at least part way there. A grandparent, back a few generations, had probably bred it into the family line. Entity, that odd creature, might still be alive and well and mostly youthful still.

"Wacko," Max mutters. He's not sure if he'd care to see her again. She'd probably try to kill him, just to see if she could get what he has, and then he'd have to kill her, and the last of her line would bleed into the sand. What a waste would that be.

Or maybe he could use that blood to bring a patch of earth back to life. He knows that works, sometimes. If he buried her and let her bones feed the ground, some green might come back, or maybe an animal.

Blood matters.

That, Max supposes, is what's happening with Immortan Joe, or whatever-the-hell this fella's name is. Max is having a hard time focusing because he's upside-down and pouring blood through a tube into a plastic bag, but he's picking up enough to know a few things.

Also, his nose still works. All these War Boys are poisoned. Poisoned to death. On purpose, probably, because it's in the paint, which is being given to them.

Population control. The chalky, self-applied kind.

Max aches a little where his heart burst earlier, but he hopes his blood does some good for whoever gets it. It might cure a wasting, or make someone immune to the toxic paint, or strengthen their gut enough that they can eat right. Although, down here, it sounds like they'll all just die anyway. Kamikrazy is right.

When the alarm blares, he doesn't much care. It might be his opportunity to escape, might not be. He can't get lost in this hustle and bustle, but it looks like all the healthy ones are leaving, which will make escaping easier.

Ah, except- oh. So that's what they're going to use him for. He'd think it clever if only it wasn't so stupid.

Perfect.

He tries not to worry about Interceptor. She'll come back to him. She always does.

In the meantime, he's chained to this stupid person, secured to a stupid car, and rock music is blaring along with them as these painted idiots howl across the sands. Chains rattle. The sick boy's heart is pulling Max's blood through a plastic tube. What did the boy call it? High octane? Hm. That is not a completely inaccurate description, in all honesty. What it will do to the boy, though, is the question.

Max can hear thunder.

He settles in for a nap.

At some point, he feels death a little too close on their heels, and so he wakes up and stops the stupid boy from killing them both. (Could he even do that?) And then, heh.

And then the crash.

He is so pleased with how things work out, sometimes.

He's still a little bit dead when he wakes up again. One eye is sort of blind and loose in the socket, and it's a good thing he kept that leg brace on because the bone is shattered just below the knee, and his lungs are full and bloody.

He calmly coughs it up and waits for the bone to fuse so that his leg will stop twitching.

"You're really something," he says to the painted boy, who should be dead, but isn't. He's a bit colder than he should be, blue around the lips and fingertips, but he's breathing, and not a single bone's broken. Impressive.

(But he really should be dead, shouldn't he?)

He dislocates his own jaw to remove the muzzle, the needle, and the undignified chain. He takes his jacket back.

Then he shuffles the boy over his shoulders and starts walking. His jaw pops back into place.

"You were right. Lovely day."

Chapter Text

He hasn't been walking for long before realizing he can sense a gathering of cells, not his own, chew and split and swell. Uck. Tumors. He hates tumors. He thought he had seen the worst of them come and gone after the flare-up of radiation sickness after the water wars, but they seem to be in abundance here. He saw more than plenty on the… what did they call themselves?

Ah. War Boys.

Well, no matter. Tumors are tumors. He'll have to kill these before they choke the boy.

But they'll choke the boy soon. They're fat and demanding, not pressed all that near the windpipe but still applying too much pressure in the neck, and they're bigger than they look. Max can hear it in the way he breathes. There's too much pressure. Too much bad flesh.

Max sets him down in the dirt and starts in on the boy's neck with a clean razor he'd had hidden in his jacket's stitching. Blood spills in little rolls, red and hot, but it's a pretty clean cut that Max presses deep enough that the razor falls straight to the mass of the first, larger tumor. Max presses it halfway through the wound and then plucks the little monster (it doesn't smell like a real monster, but who knows) free with his fingers (shadows of claws for half a moment) when there's finally enough to get a grip on. Not that the slimy thing can be properly gripped.

(little monsters, these demons of the material world, chewy little flesh-renders)

The smaller one is deeper and more difficult. Max goes at it with his teeth (the prominent, curved canines are there even if no one sees) and ends up sucking it out as much as chewing it.

It comes free. He spits blood and bad tissue onto the sand. Trying to wipe the red from his mouth only smears it across his face and arm, so he licks his lips and grimaces at the aftertaste of death.

He hears the distant shriek of a lost Wisp.

The wound leftover barely bleeds, oddly enough. The tumors seemed deeper than that. Or maybe the boy's just dehydrated. That'll do it. So it's not enough blood flow to be worried about. The first few dribbles of red race down to the sand, and then that seems to be the worst of it.

Strange, but then again, it's not as though Max is really all that knowledgeable of how mortals bleed. They die or they don't and he's never quite understood it.

He hauls the boy up onto his shoulders again, and walks.

There is a Wisp stalking about the sands. Sometimes she takes Jessie's face. Sometimes she is a little girl who he thinks he might recognize, but isn't sure. He's known so many humans. It's impossible to remember them all, even if the Wisps can.

They usually get tired of him ignoring them after an hour or so, but this one keeps up with him, flitting about and talking at him. He doesn't listen. But she keeps talking. This one must be particularly lonely, but he knows that if he speaks to her, she will never leave him alone. And he can't bear to look at her when she has on Jessie's face.

It is not as though Jessie is the first love he's lost. He has had wives before her, each one precious to him, each name engraved upon his heart. Partnership with mortals is a brief and strange thing, but his loneliness often draws him back to them. They are bright and beautiful if they care to be, in their short lives. Jessie was like that.

Jessie was unique in that she had borne him a child. Immortals have difficulty reproducing. This is necessary, of course, or else they would overrun the world with their numbers, generation upon generation refusing to die. Or, they would have. Before. When there were enough of them it would have mattered.

But Max hasn't met another Immortal in millennia. The ones like Entity and Humungus, with their little glimmers of Inhumanity, might have bred an Immortal back into the world, because Max knows that can happen, but he hasn't seen any evidence of that.

Jessie's son, his son, would have been immortal. Max would not be alone now, if he had lived.

But he did not live. And Max sees nothing but dust and ruin on the hazy horizon.

He ignores Jessie's Wisp and marches on.

"Where are you, Max?"

At some point, the War Boy wakes up with a jolt and a startled noise, violently coughs up dirt and chrome spittle and half-coagulated blood all over Max's back, then passes out again.

Max looks to see bits of bloody flesh fall to the sand, stringy and yellowed around the edges. The smell is very wrong, a lot like rot and sickness, and Max kicks sand over the mess.

If something like that is coming out of the War Boy's body, there's probably nothing Max can do to save him now. He considers, for a moment, simply letting the boy lay to rest in the sand. There's not much point in carrying around a corpse.

But the War Boy coughs a little more, then takes in a deep, deep breath. And keeps breathing.

Some of the rasp is gone from his lungs.

Hm.

Max keeps walking, War Boy in tow.

Chapter Text

Miss Giddy has Histories written on almost every inch of her body, so that she doesn't forget. She's been teaching it to the Wives.

Angharad doesn't really listen anymore. Capable and The Dag and even Toast are all still fascinated, in their own way, and Cheedo listens like a child hearing stories instead of Histories, but Angharad… doesn't have any more room in her heart for Histories. They all make the world past sound so wonderful, but if it had really been that way, then how did it die?

She asks as much.

"It's not dead, child," Miss Giddy says, rousing the girls from their boredom to listen to words they've never heard before.

They hear the same Histories, over and over again. They hear the same kamikrazee talk about the godhood of Joe. New things, presented from old ideas, are as precious to them as water is to the Wretched.

Who killed the world? That has been their cry. But it strongly implies that the world has sighed its dying breath already, and no one has ever told them otherwise before now.

"Seems pretty dead to me," says Toast, because she's seen a little more world than most of them have. She wasn't born of the Wretched or the Milking Mothers.

Angharad isn't sure where Toast was born, actually. She doesn't remember Toast being brought.

"It's sleeping," Miss Giddy confides to them. She wrings her hands in a way that tells Angharad that her joints are hurting. Her printed skin is like paper, fragile and discolored. "This world is in a winter. Everything sleeps in winter."

All they know about winter is that it's the time when the nights are even longer. It makes the air cold. Nights can be miserable if they don't all sleep together in a pile. But they don't know anything else about winter, in a place and time where the clouds don't roll in, heavy and thick with snow, and there is no ice, and no winter celebrations, or warm fires to cozy up by.

"Do you know what comes after winter?"

"Spring," says Toast.

"That is the time when things wake up," Miss Giddy says, maybe a bit too enthusiastically for students who don't yet understand. "It's when the plants start budding, and the animals birth young."

What animals? Angharad wonders. What buds?

This is why she doesn't listen to the Histories anymore. Those things are gone, and saying that spring will come might be true, but it will not make the animals return or the trees grow. They are all dead. Not sleeping.

Dead.

But that night, she dreams of a forest.

She knows, in her dream, that it is deep. She does not know how a forest can be deep. She knows nothing about forests. But she dreams of a forest with so many trees that are so tall and so full and so crowded together that when she looks up, she can only see faint, distant glimmers of sunlight through the green, so small and far away that they are like golden stars in a night sky of green leaves.

She climbs under and through brown, twisting roots that are covered in green stuff that she thinks might be grass. And the roots are bigger than her, and the trees are like the pillars of The Citadel, and there is so much green that her eyes swim with it.

The air is thick and buzzing. She's never felt anything like it before, but the air is wet, and it feels oddly heavy in her lungs, and everything she touches is full of it. The earth beneath her feet is black and good and nothing like sand, and none of the green is brittle or dying, and she feels like she could sink her hands into the trunk of a tree and take a soft, juicy bite. She does not and she will not, but she never knew the world could feel this way.

Bugs, more than she's ever seen and none of them maggots or flies, crawl across her path, and sometimes crawl on her, and she lets them. They are all so different, alive, colorful, and some have wings, or long legs, or look like leaves and twigs. They move and it makes the forest look like it is moving.

Some small creature the size of her thumb lands with a wet plap on her hand, and she freezes to stare at it.

It is so small.

She has nothing to compare it to. It's strange and wet and slippery and it has perfectly round oil spots for eyes and it makes the oddest creaking sound at her before it flings itself off into the green with its long, flopping back legs and flat feet.

In a dream, time is strange. She thinks that she walks for a long time, climbing massive tree roots and marveling at the life of it all, but maybe it was just a moment. Every strange creature and sound could have been worth years of sleep, but she does not know how long they last.

But she is suddenly aware of being present when her foot lands in cool water that comes up to her knee.

And from there, it goes on, and on, and on.

It is rich water. Plants float on it and in it. More of that stuff she thinks is grass coats the floor, squishing softly under her feet as she stands fully in the water. There are insects buzzing and diving around the surface, and something in the water, little shadows no longer than her fingers that dart about so quickly in the water that she can't really see them as much as just think she sees them.

She wades through the water, bits of mud and plant sticking to her legs and dress, until she comes to a little island of dark, wet dirt in the middle of it, and she sits on it to rest. Her legs are challenged by the unknown resistance of water. It's different from chains or sand or even the push and pull of storm winds.

And then the dream tilts and she is on her back on a soft green island amidst the waters and her pregnant belly is larger and there is a strange pressure there, down low, and the green fills her eyes–

She doesn't scream because it doesn't hurt but she gasps as water and thinned blood splash out from between her legs, and the green drinks it in. The heaviness of her belly comes away, and she feels a jolt of fear, and then without any pain there is something sliding free from her, and it is… not a baby.

No, not a baby. Perhaps it is a baby something, but the afterbirth slides off of it and it is not a baby human, not as it is, covered in short fur with its four long, spindly legs. Angharad adores it, and distantly knows that she should be terrified of this thing that just came out of her, because it is impossible and wrong, but she also knows… it's just a dream. And this dream creature is sweet and helpless and softer than anything she has ever felt. She embraces it, lifting it to cuddle against her chest like a blanket, and it presses into her body as if it loves her, too. She presses her fingers to white spots on its back and haunches, staring into pale blue eyes–

Joe's eyes–

It rests its soft head against her shoulder and cries.

Angharad has been acting strangely. They've all noticed. But they understand.

At least, they think that they do.

Furiosa is allowed to visit them, sometimes, only because she is a woman. She has stood guard over them when Joe could not, but unlike Joe, she has gained their trust. She has told them of a far-off land, something out of the Histories, something that should not be, and she says that if they are careful and clever and quick… she can take them there.

The Green Place.

It should be nothing but a story. They should be broken of such hopes and dreams. They should not believe in anything green that is not from Immortan Joe's mighty tower.

"I believe," says Angharad, hands upon her pregnant belly.

Angharad doesn't believe anymore. They all know this. But she looks at them, and they see it.

She believes.

Angharad has never seen any animal other than buzzards and rats, outside of the pictures in books. And those were faded, discolored pictures, but she memorized the shape of every animal that could still be seen. The lion with all his female pride reminded her of Joe. The antelope was a strange one, spindly and thin, like the baby in her dream. The wildebeest, the hippopotamus, the crocodile, the cheetah, the wolf, the monkey, the hyena, the wild dog, the giraffe, the elephant. Their torn, sun-faded, barely-bound Book of Africa described all of these, and there were even some pictures that weren't completely faded. And Angharad does not know where Africa is, or was. Maybe they're in what's left of it. But she likes to imagine all those animals are still out in the world somewhere.

But not here. Not in the Wasteland.

At least, she's thought as much.

Something glimmers in the corner of her eye, like a mirage, and it probably is one. But she steps away from the others, turns to look, and she sees it.

A dog.

Or something like one. It stands tall and lean and dark tan with hunter's eyes and pointed, upright ears. And it's carrying something. She doesn't know what.

It's beautiful. It can't be real, of course. It wavers in the light of the sun, and will blow away like sand if she gives it another moment, but it's beautiful. Her mind has created it from books, of course, or the desert has carved it from memory. Just like the baby antelope-animal in her dream. It looks nearly real, though. Her eyes hold it until it trickles into the sand.

There is no dog, or wolf, or whatever it was.

But now she sees that there is a man.

"Smeg!" she mutters, and that's usually a word she leaves to The Dag, but she feels it now.

A man. Maybe not one of Joe's, but it doesn't matter.

She should call to Furiosa, but she doesn't. The girls are drinking and washing and tearing away the belts that have marked them as slaves, and she stands with her back to them so that she can watch the man who only she seems to see.

If they would look, would they see the dog too?

She's been having strange thoughts like that ever since she had the dream. She wonders if it's madness. She wonders if the sun has finally taken her mind. But if that were so, would it feel so calm?

One of the girls yelps in surprise when they see him, because he is suddenly not far away anymore. He is face-to-face with The Splendid Angharad, looking into her eyes, with a gun at his side and a War Boy slung over his shoulder. Half-dried blood is blotted around his mouth, and a line of it is drawn down his throat where it had dripped from there onto his shirt.

Angharad hears the girls call her name. She hears Furiosa say something, but doesn't know what.

The man uses the gun to point behind himself, and he makes a strange, grumbling noise deep in his throat. She would think it inhuman, if she had ever heard what something inhuman sounded like. It sounds like a warning, but not a threat, and she doesn't know how she understands, but the non-language feels familiar.

In the distance, over his shoulder, she spies the slightest speck of iron on sand. It looks like nothing, but there are only so many things that can be a speck of nothing in the desert at this distance.

"Joe's brought his war party," she calls out to the girls.

"Did he tell you that?" the Dag snarls, as angry as ever.

"I can see them," is the only answer Angharad gives.

The dark curses of Furiosa are quiet, but not quiet enough.

And then, to Angharad's surprise, the man holds his gun out to her, barrel-down, so that she can take it from him.

She takes it, delicately. She isn't used to guns and it's much heavier than she expected it to be. But he doesn't try to take it back, nor does he take advantage and strike at her while she distractedly handles a gun for the first time.

He looks into her eyes, gaze dragging through her like melting metal, and he settles into an idea that she's being trying to hide.

"It's not grass," he murmurs with a voice that must still be half-lost in the dust storm.

Angharad feels an entire forest in her chest.

"... What?" she dares ask.

"In the forest," he says. His eyes are looking at her, but not seeing her. "It's not grass. It's called moss. Grass is different."

Angharad, had she thought to, would have counted three heartbeats come and gone in the time it took for her to understand, and to make a decision.

She turns and finds Furiosa's steely eyes first.

"He's coming with us."

She believes.

Chapter Text

It's probably just because of the water that he finds them. He's drawn to it. Not because it is water but because it is clean .

They're all dressed in white linen, except for one. They're halfway between afraid and enraged, which speaks of their strength, because they've still got the strength to be angry. None of them notices him… except for one.

She’s pregnant. At least two of them are, he can smell it, but she’s farthest along and showing as much. She sees him immediately and sounds no alarm. She just… stands there. Waiting for him. And when he arrives, too close for comfort, she only looks at him.

It's only when he gets so close that he really sees what they're doing, and some old anger, like a demon of the Elder World, roils in his gut. He’s seen horrible things, much worse than this, even before the world went sour (a cop saw murder, saw rape, saw abuse, saw blood, saw hate and apathy , and immortals, well, they tend to see the worst of the world in general, when you have so much time to watch), but it’s just– it’s–

The heavy, metallic snap of bolt-cutters splitting an iron ring sounds very, very loud to him. Everything does.

He gestures behind himself with a grunt, hoping that this woman will understand the non-verbal hey you had better hurry up because they're still chasing you , just because he has to get used to speaking human words again, and then he draws his gun.

There is heavy silence, heavier than a mountain, but she stares at him, and he sees something glimmering behind her eyes that he’d like to catch. 

"Joe's brought his war party," she says loudly, not to him, but to the women behind her.

The palest one, with white skin and white hair, bares her white teeth at him.

"Did he tell you that?" she demands with a voice like a sword.

"I can see them," says the pregnant woman, which doesn't really answer the question.

The woman who is not in white curses under her breath, and he can see that if any of them put up a fight, it will likely be her. The pale one is angry enough to fight, but not strong enough to win. This one is strong. She's the leader, probably. 

More immediately important is that he realizes that he’s just made a fairly non-threatening gesture, but with a gun, and that won’t do at all.

He holds out his gun to the pregnant one, loose in his hand and barrel pointed down to the sand. She takes it like it’s a snake (it could be). She's busy staring at his mouth, though, which, ah, is still smeared with blood that’s starting to get dry enough to itch. He doesn’t wonder what that looks like because he knows well enough. 

The women in white huddle together, afraid and angry. They don't want him anywhere near him. He doesn't blame them. But they're wasting good water, and a war party is riding fast behind them.

He leans in closer to the pregnant one until he can feel her breath on his face. She has strange scars and beautiful eyes, but he wants what's behind them– that glimmer from before. It isn't just sunshine. It's something that the others probably can't see.

It's a Dream.

The sweet dregs of an Old Forest are still cool and clear in her mind, and he can taste it, taste the green, and he wishes that he could have joined her Dreaming and touched the black bark of the first trees again, but all he can do now is catch the last imprints of whatever she felt there. She isn't like him, he can tell, so how did she Dream it? Why would it grow in her?

He's close enough that he senses it when the baby in her belly moves.

Oh , Max thinks, and maybe he understands. 

"It's not grass," he says.

"... What?"

"In the forest," he says. He looks through her eyes and sees the frog that blessed her hand, and the minnows that swam around her toes, and the soft, green island where she birthed a Prince of the Forest. "It's not grass. It's called moss. Grass is different."

Her eyes widen, and then she looks back at the woman who is not one of the rest (missing arm, hair cropped short to the skull, grease blackening the brow to protect her eyes from the light, beautiful, war paint ), and Max isn't sure if this woman is looking for permission or demanding it.

(He imagines a Queen of the Forest. They had never been human, of course, but the world is different now.)

"He's coming with us," she says.

The darker woman frowns deeply, but nods and turns back to the truck.

Well. That worked.

Max readjusts the dead weight of the War Boy on his shoulders and sighs. They don't have time for this. He really doesn't want to be taken back to the Citadel and then have to escape again . If the sand has been cleared from both their lungs at the rig, then they ought to be moving again.

"'Scuse me," he says, low and full of dust. He nods toward the water they're wasting.

He's never really thirsty . Not the way humans are. He won't shrivel up and die without water. But that doesn't mean he won't feel better if he has some. Clean water will give him a boost , anyway. And if they're about to run, he'll be wanting it.

"Could you help?" asks the red-haired girl, because apparently all it takes is him handing over a gun.

How unwise.

"How can he help?" says the littlest one, who smells less like a woman and more like a child. She has the most fear of them all. But she has a sharpness in her eyes, too. Smart girl, very smart, but just scared enough to get dumb when the driving gets gritty.

I used to be like you, until I realized that nothing would ever drive easy again.

The one with pale hair is the angriest of all and she does not want him to go with them. The other one, darker than the rest, is considering him, but more so the gun that he just handed over. They both have a look to them, like they are ready to strike him down if they can figure out how, and he has no doubt that they will try as much if he makes even one mistake. He will live anyway, of course, but they don't know that.

"He can't," says Pale, not as sure as she sounds, judging by the flickering in her eyes like angry Spirits. Her gray eyes are like glass under the glaring light, the same way his look when he tries to make his body seem more human, because that's as good as he can manage. "Some blood-let feral. He can't."

The pregnant one frowns at him, and he wonders if he can see a touch of Jessie in her face. But she's taking him in with eyes like a Spirit, looking for what might be beneath his skin, and he welcomes the searching gaze. He needs someone to See. Not that she can. There's a scent of Inhumanity about her, but it might be from the Immortal in her womb. She seems human enough herself.

Their leader finishes whatever she was doing and walks up to the rest of them, to him, and looks at him the same way that wolves used to.

"Can you shoot?" she asks him.

Max nods.

"Can you drive?"

Nod.

"Can you speak?"

Nod.

"If he makes one wrong move, we shoot him," she says to the pregnant one, and then she climbs into the cab.

Fair. It wouldn't make much of a difference, but, fair.

Max dumps the painted boy into the puddle of water and hurriedly attempts to wash the deathly chalk away. It will only steal more life the longer it stays on, so he turns the water milk-colored and prays that the good water will dilute the poison as it sinks into the ground. Flecks of chrome-colored spray paint drop from the boy's lips. Mud covers the boy instead, and just as well. That pale skin needs protection from the sun.

"Is he your friend?" asks Red.

"Friends with a War Boy?" Pale scoffs. Angry, angry, angry.

Max grunts and scrubs some of the drying blood from his face with his palm.

He delicately removes the needle from the boy's wrist and pulls the tubing free from the chain. His blood and some of the boy's drips into the water. Mostly his, as he squeezes it out of the tube. Pink fades into the murky water. There. Maybe that would do the ground some good, or at least neutralize the poisoned paint.

"Still good," he says, handing the tube and needles up to any girl who will take it.

The calmest one does, eyes unwavering even as her hand shakes. She's also dark-skinned, with eyes like the earth. 

She trades the bolt-cutter to him, and he takes it with a grateful bow of his head and sets to work on freeing the boy's wrist from the chain and shackle that had held the needle and tubing steady. Calm watches him, and by the way she hovers, he thinks she might be ready to help him if he can't manage.

He wants to know their names. So far he sees them as Calm, Little, Pale, Red, Pregnant, and Leader. He doesn't like that at all. And he's fairly sure– no, completely sure, that Pale is also pregnant.

The chain comes away easily. The strange shackle is much harder, tight to the boy's skin. He has to work at it.

"We need to hurry," says Little, but none of them move.

The shackle comes free along with a little blood and scraped skin, but no serious damage. He takes it, and the chain. He's not fond of iron, mostly out of respect for the fae kin, but in a world of minimal resources, he ought not waste something that can be reforged.

The women back away from him a few steps once he's done with his task, and he remembers that they don't have a single reason to trust him and every reason to be afraid.

He'll have to fix that.

He looks up at them in questioning silence, hoping that they'll introduce themselves or at least tell him what's happening. Because he can guess, from what he saw in The Citadel, and by the ugly chastity devices that they had to break to rid themselves of, but he wants to be told so that he can get right and properly angry about it.

Having a rage to dig his teeth into might do him some good. He's been quiet for too long.

"So you're bringing the War Boy, then?" asks Calm.

Max nods.

"Why?"

That's a good bloody question. Max could just shrug it off, but it doesn't feel like he should, but he also doesn't have an answer. He's already given the boy blood, however unwillingly, and bitten the little demons out of the boy's flesh, and carried him all this way, and washed the poison off his skin, so leaving him now seems wrong. But he's not sure as to why he did any of it in the first place, other than that… it's just not in his nature. Were he just a man, it would not have mattered, but he's not just a man and he can taste the potential of life on his tongue like clear water.

If there's one thing he's learned, in watching the world shatter into a billion pieces, it's that he has to be able to fix something. Or else… he might just–

"He's broken," is all Max says.

That is obviously not a good enough answer, but he's spoken more today than he has in years and it's all he can give because the path between his muddled mind and unpractised mouth is twisted.

They don't press for more, though. They look at each other, confused and distrustful, but it seems that his answer is enough for women who gave up safety and water and food for freedom.

"Let's get him into the Rig so we can get ahead of Joe, then," says Red.

Max wonders what he's gotten himself into.

Chapter Text

"Are you coming to The Green Place?"

It's Cheedo who asks.

And he … does not answer.

They're all piled in the cab. The man rides next to her with an unaggressive, unthreatening posture. The War Boy is tied up and secured in the hold, as per their strange guest's suggestion, since it seems that they are not friends. Why they have brought the War Boy, Furiosa doesn't know. Why they have brought this man, Furiosa doesn't know. Why Angharad vouched for him, Furiosa doesn't know, but… she does have an idea.

"Do you two know each other?" Furiosa asks.

The man huffs slightly, but doesn't speak.

"I'm not sure," says Angharad.

Thirty days ago, that answer would have surprised Furiosa. Angharad didn't speak like that. That was the sort of crazy that came out of Dag's mouth. Capable was… capable of it, though it would have sounded less crazy. Cheedo might have gotten some strange notion in her head. But not Toast, and certainly not Angharad. They were the steadiest and most sensible ones.

But thirty days ago, Angharad started acting strange. She was normal one day, and according to the Wives, different upon waking in the next. And that was why they were here. Angharad was too sensible for ideas about escaping or The Green Place. Until she wasn't. 

"I believe," she said, after thousands of days believing in nothing and no one.

Furiosa didn't know why and didn't question it. She simply took what she could get and started making solid plans, half worried that Angharad would wake up another morning and be back to how she was before. Without any belief at all.

But it didn't happen, and here they are with a strange man riding to her right and a War Boy in the hatch and no real reason as to why except that The Splendid Angharad said so.

"Do you know me?" Angharad asks the man, and Furiosa realizes that this man isn't old but he is older than all of them and it isn't likely, but perhaps he does know Angharad from when she was too young to remember him . Perhaps he is a brother or uncle or even father . 

She won't bet on it, but it would be something that might make sense when nothing else does.

The man looks at Angharad, studying her carefully. 

"Don't remember," he answers.

Judging by the glassy haze in his eyes, and the heat and the storm he dragged himself and the War Boy out from, Furiosa has good reason to believe that it's the truth. This man is unaware of what he's stepped into and to whom he is offering aid. There is some strange familiarity between them, some similarity in the eyes, but nothing that Furiosa can put a name to if they can't explain it themselves. 

"Then why?" demands Furiosa, because even if it's true, it doesn't make sense.

He looks at her. The road is open and without obstacles, so she looks back at him. Those eyes just aren't right– he's mad or ill or both. Or maybe going blind, but she can't pick out what trait might make her think as much. She sees no jaundice, no cataracts, and no clear mutations. 

But something is not quite… right.

"Does it matter?" he asks. "I'll help. I don't want to go back."

That's a good enough reason. Maybe the most sensible one he could possibly give, which is why she accepts it. For now.

Furiosa looks back to the sand, still confused and unsettled, but not wanting to return to The Citadel is a motivation she can understand and even trust. The man was a Bloodbag. It is not the worst fate for a man in The Citadel, but it is terrible enough, especially to someone who had been free before. He might fight for them, if it means not going back to needles and chains, and she can use that.

And if he causes harm, she will kill him.

The man and Angharad are looking at each other, silent and searching. There is some sort of communication happening between them that Furiosa can't understand, but it only leaves her more certain that they recognize each other, in some way. It's too bad that the man is too mad to explain it.

"I'm Furiosa," she says, less hostile now. "It is Angharad who spoke for you. These are Toast, Capable, Cheedo, and The Dag."

He nods to each of them, mad eyes settling over their faces for long enough that Furiosa knows he is actually attempting to know them and their names. It's a rare thing, that care to know anyone. That he offers it to them shows slightly more investment than simply wanting to make sure he doesn't go back to The Citadel. 

"And what do I call you?" asks Furiosa.

The man looks at her and doesn't answer. His expression might be one of confusion, but it's as though he doesn't realize that he's the one who is confused. Like she's the one who's asked a nonsense question. Like it's not strange that he doesn't know how to answer her, just odd that she even asked.

"Alright, then. When I say 'fool,' I'm talking to you."

The laugh he lets out is so dry that it sounds more like sand on the wind than a voice.

"Alright," he agrees, and his eyes light up in a strange way that must be a reflection from the windshield. "Alright."

Chapter Text

Furiosa, Angharad, Toast, Capable, Cheedo, and The Dag. They have good names.

Max takes their names and tucks them into his chest for safekeeping, right next to his heart. This is a dangerous road they're on, the sort where people can lose their names, and that shouldn't happen to any of them. They're sweet creatures who don't seem to understand what they're doing or what they're fighting or what they will be fighting. Well. Furiosa seems to know. Toast looks like she knows, but there's still a young softness around her. The Dag has an angry way about her that says that she doesn't know but is furious and in fighting form about it anyway. He has no idea if that anger will break like glass under pressure or if she is truly the lightning strike she resembles. It doesn't matter. He still keeps her name. All of their names.

"Have a plan?" he asks, more out of curiosity than a need to know. He would love to be more aware of their way of things. Furiosa seems like the sort to have a plan. "Or just… ah, creativity?"

"I have a plan." Furiosa keeps her queen's eyes on the road. "I made a deal up ahead. Safe passage."

He can see the canyon ahead. He has a vague idea of what's in there because he's passed by it, but not through it. At least, he doesn't currently remember passing through it before. Maybe he has. He wishes his mind was a bit less fickle. He wishes he could be more human and present now for these women who need help. But maybe they don't need human.

Humans are crumbling. He is not. He can offer them something else.

"There's more," he mutters, watching the dust clouds rise from the barren earth in the bleary reflection of the rear view mirror. He speaks quietly only so that the girls will not hear him and be afraid. "Too many."

"Vehicles?" Furiosa says as if to clarify, but she glances back for herself. "Damn. Toast, what do you see?"

"Big rigs," Toast supplies, dark eyes watching those glares of danger pursuing them. "Pole cats… flamers. And there's the People Eater himself, coming to count the cost."

"Packs," Max says, thinking of starving wolves. Or hyenas. Mad with disease. That seems more right. "Three of them."

Furiosa scowls, looking angry. Fear rests in the crease of her brow. Max doesn't know much fear. Pain doesn't really hurt and loss is as old and as unavoidable as decay itself. Still, he can sense it in other people, smell it if his physical senses are more present than his psychic ones, and he knows it's bad. Sour. Too hot or too cold. The fear in Furiosa is quiet and deep and he knows that she hides it as well as she does because she's had to.

"I don't know if my deal is still any good," she admits with a disgruntled look.

Max nods. Things will be messy, then. "Mm."

They enter the canyon and he immediately hears the calling of Wisps. Many of them call his name, though he doesn't know why. This place is thick with them though, and they wander amidst the rocks. They all stop to watch him as the rig passes them by, and the back of his neck tingles as he senses them follow. Curious little buggers. He wishes that they didn’t take the forms of people, but then again, there aren't so many options anymore. Not their fault, really. They used to take whatever form pleased them best that was available, typically trees and animals, but the trees and animals were gone and all that was left for Wisps to echo were people. Dead people, typically. Remnants of bones and last breaths.

They call to him. They call and call. He doesn't know how they all know and recognize him. Wisps are known to spread word like dandelion seeds on the wind, but this is a bit much. But… perhaps it can be useful.

As Furiosa guides the rig into the canyon, Max watches the Wisps crowd in. Usually, a single Wisp or even as many as ten cannot do much that has any perceivable affect on the material world, but he sees at least fifty here and can hear the disturbed thrumming of many more. Many more. It is so heavy and loud that he can hardly hear anything else. The girls are speaking, Furiosa is speaking, he can see their mouths move, but he cannot hear them.

"Whatever you do," Furiosa is saying, but he doesn't catch the rest of it. It might be important, but the Wisps are crowding the rig. What do they want? Why are there so many?

She must see his eyes go glassy, because she says it again.

"Whatever—" Her voice is lost in the clamor. "— can't be seen!" She's saying it more to the girls, he thinks, but her eyes stray back to him. "I was supposed to be alone. That was the deal. But I need you now. When I yell 'fool'... you drive out of here as fast as you can."

Max smirks a little, the edge of laughter despite the clamor of Wisps, and he nods.

"This is the sequence," she says, and she says it as though she can tell that his mind isn't entirely with her at the moment. "One. One, two. One. Red. Black. Go. You have it?"

He grunts an affirmation.

The killswitch is not complicated, and with a little time, he probably could have listened to the fingerprints until they told him which keys were turned in which order, but there's no time for that. It's good that Furiosa trusted him with it, but Max tries not to take it as a compliment. She's in need and he can provide a service. True trust may come later, given time.

Ears ringing, Max herds the girls all back into the hold. They need to arrange themselves to be comfortable, but even then, it is a bad hiding place. It's open at the bottom, so the air does not get too hot and stuffy, but there is also not enough legroom, especially with the tied-up warboy crammed in. And none of them want to touch the boy, but they don't have a choice. The girls settle in the back with him, except for Angharad, who settles next to Max as naturally as anything. Furiosa gets out of The Rig, and he can barely hear her over the Wisps.

"Death," says a Wisp, an echo of a young man peeking up through the hatch. "She approaches Death."

Max growls at the Wisp, curling himself protectively closer to Angharad, and it retreats only a little before wandering back. 

"Max," the Wisp implores him, "Max, oh Captain, render of the Thunderdome, what shall we do? Max! Speak, gladiator!"

Max blinks. Furiosa is outside, and he can hear the tension in her voice as she tries to push them forward. There is no time to negotiate if they wish to live. No time. They must fly.

"Give us wings," he whispers, softer than the flight of a moth. "And cripple the pack that follows."

He does not think the Wisp will listen, and he does not know if the Wisp is capable of doing anything anyway. Wisps rarely listen to anyone. It is not their way.

But the Wisp surprises him by nodding and retreating, leaving the hatch clear. Max stares into the emptiness, knowing that no one else saw the interaction, and he sighs. He would rather not deal with Wisps at the best of times, but if Wisps did what they were bidden for once and helped the girls survive, he supposed he could allow them some grace. It wasn't their fault that they were what they were, after all.

In the brief waiting, Max feels it coming before Angharad does. The first faulty pains of labor nearly give them away, but he settles his hand protectively on her belly and the baby within stills. In that moment, Max is not just Max, and the baby that is also something else recognizes him. Max can feel the spirit of water in the child, a clean strength that he recognizes from his… cousins, so to speak.

His kind.

The baby is different from him, but not by much. It understands. It goes still, hiding as quietly as they do. The first breath of labor releases, only a sigh and no more. For now.

And then, through the noise of Wisps like thunder, he hears Furiosa's voice as a whisper.

Chapter Text

Furiosa shouts for him— well. She shouts, "Fool!" and he moves, leaving Angharad behind him. His hands fly through the sequence and The Rig lurches forward, heavy but fast. The wheel is smooth and perfect under his hands, like driving The Interceptor. He doesn't have time to wonder at the potential sentience of The Rig or at the whereabouts of The Interceptor, though, because suddenly the air explodes.

There are Wisps everywhere.

They swarm like birds, a furious murmuration, leaving behind their masks of the dead and rising into their natural forms. Beings of light, impressions of wings and tails, spiraling into the sky and diving back down to Earth. The Rig bursts through them, but Max has never seen so many. And he can barely see through the flashing light, and he has to trust from the glimpses he can spot through them that he has the straight-away.

In the mass of them, he can't quite see what they're doing, but he hears the confused screams of what he thinks are scavengers amongst the rocks. What is happening? Why? Wisps don't do this.

Furiosa is beside him in an instant. He passes a gun into her hands and she takes aim at what he can barely perceive. Damn, this is not a good time for him to have his eyes in the Otherworld. He blinks rapidly, trying to clear away the Sight so that he can drive through these canyons without a Wisp distracting him. Flipping in a truck like this could mean death for all of them.

The sound of rocks cracking and crumbling means that the way is shut behind them. At least for a little while. If they have only the scavengers to contend with for this first flight through the canyon, then perhaps they will make it, especially with the Wisps aiding them and the Rig so determined to survive.

He grabs a smaller gun from one of the many hiding places on The Rig, the bullets within calling to him as they did when black powder and iron were first combined, when the ancient forests were razed, when the spirits fought and fled, when he first picked up that first gun and held it in his hands and—

He doesn't waste a bullet. One shot and one shot only for each head he catches in his sights. It's not that many, though— the Wisps are taking care of it. He watches the scavengers twist and turn away, pressing hands over their ears or waving their arms as if to fend off a swarm of wasps. They retreat into the rocks, scuttling like bugs. He doesn't understand it. Only his kind can see the Wisps. Only his kind hear them. The rare true psychic will be aware of them and the Otherworld to some degree, but not like this. It cannot be that all scavengers in this lonely canyon have the Sight. It is something the Wisps are doing, but what—

A scavenger got ahead and tossed something back, a flare grenade or something that is less force and mostly fire, and he snarls at the heat. The Rig drives on through, powerful and unwavering. Good for her.

The baby kicks.

"Quiet," he whispers into the color-saturated sand as it is stirred up around them like a veil of earth by The Rig's moose gooser. "Hush, hush, hush-a-bye. Don't scare your mother."

He and Furiosa work together like warriors of old. A shiver of long-dormant excitement runs down his spine as he reloads and passes her gun back to her. They don't just shoot around each other, they take aim in the space-between-spaces. He imagines being back-to-back with her in a fight and can alright feel the satisfaction of it. She is not immortal, not one of his kind, but does it matter when they can fight like this? They are alike.

"Reload the clip!"

He hasn't felt that in a long time.

A scavenger gets too close. Max saves his bullet as a Wisp wraps itself around the scavenger and screams ill omens. The Rig pulls to go left and Max turns with it, trusting her. She's got a spirit, he can feel it, and she does not wish to batter herself against the rocks. He has to trust her to protect her cargo.

"Gun— Gun!"

"I can't, it's not reloaded yet!"

He shoots without looking and the bullet strikes true, busting out the back window.

They lose the fuel tank. Fire bursts across the sand behind them.

The Rig does not drive like Interceptor, but she still responds to Max like she knows him. They drive steady through the chaos. She breathes, choking out sand and fire, and he pushes some of his self through her, easing the strain on her incredible engine. He feels The Rig for a moment, like and extension of his own body, feels that she does not like how her windows are shattered but still runs true as ever. He squeezes the wheel in a sort of reassurance. Surely she will have her chance to rest, if they survive. She cannot run forever.

But she can run long enough to put this bastard Immortan behind them.

Someone else's fear thuds up behind his ears. Max's head swings as he searches for Angharad amidst the bright flares of Wisp wings. Her blond hair is bright and shining like silk as the wind pulls at it. What the hell is she doing?

He wants to snarl at her not to do that, to tell her that the Wisps are taking care of it, but she can't hear him and he doesn't really know what the Wisps will or won't do. They cannot rely on the Wisps. She is fighting the only way she knows how.

"Damn it!" he curses anyway. "Kill him!"

Furiosa takes her shot and misses, or is blocked. It doesn't matter because the Immortan lives either way, and is smart enough to back away and try again from another angle. Max doesn't know what that angle is going to be until the entire truck flies out in front of them from the other side, having swung around the back of them. The massive tires are still spinning when the truck lands in the dust with a heavy rattle and plows on.

Oh. It's a damn monster truck. Alright.

Screw that.

The Wisps shriek ahead of him in bright flashes, crying curses against Immortan Joe's chrome carriage.

"That's right, that's right," he murmurs lowly, watching them push themselves against the massive tires and crash against the painted frame. "Go. Cripple him."

They try.

He has to make a shot and hits a War Boy. This Immortan is smart. So smart, breeding an army that is not only ready and willing but wanting to die. It keeps him so safe and cozy behind a barrier of their dying bodies.

Jackass.

He feels the harpoon coming before it does and he tilts his head out of the way by just enough that it doesn't go through his head, but it hits the wheel. The Rig screams angrily at this offense, and Max growls himself, only for that to rise into an angry snarl when the wheel is torn free and it pins his hand against The Rig's frame. Furiosa leaps to help him, reaching to try to pry his hand free, but she can do nothing and he is still pinned. Pain is not something he truly feels anymore, not normal pain of the physical variety, but he doesn't like what is happening and the blood is dripping down his arm now. It's wasteful.

The creak of a door is loud in his ear and he looks back to see that the girls are working together to free his hand and The Rig. Angharad has the bolt cutters and is twisting down on the chain attached to the harpoon. He's getting tired of chains and of needing those bolt cutters.

The chain snaps away, taking the wheel with it, but Max's hand is free. Furiosa replaces the wheel by tightening into place a wrench by which they might steer. And it is only just on time for The Rig to try to turn them as they come upon a crop of rocks.

One of the girls screams. He turns just quickly enough to see that Angharad is not clear of the danger, still hanging over the ground by the door.

Damn it, damn it!

She is struggling to pull herself in and he can't reach her. Capable is screaming. The Wisps scream louder.

A desperate command rattles its way up through Max's throat and scrapes against his fangs on its way out.

"Wake up, War Boy!"

Chapter Text

Do not be afraid.  

Nux hears nothing. But he can…

What is that? What is that?

There's someone screaming, far away, but right near his ear. She's screaming like she wants him to listen, but he doesn't know what she's saying. She's too quiet. Why is she whispering so quietly when she's screaming?

Do not be afraid. You are no longer half-life.

Sand is golden and chrome and bloodied, and so is the sky, with clouds like red scabs torn all across it. The wind howls, loud , but the sand moves slow and lazy. He's bleeding, too, from his neck, and the blood sort of drifts away with the sand instead of dripping and sinking. It looks like what he imagined Valhalla would look like, but this cannot be Valhalla. There is only emptiness everywhere. No War Boys. No war. No glory.

The half-life has died. What are you now, full-life?

And then he sees The Immortan. 

"Joe!" he cries, relief crashing through his chest like aqua cola as his hands form the sign of the V8. Oh, here is The Immortan to guide him into Valhalla! He understands now. "Immortan Joe! Immortan!"

Joe steps toward him and Nux hears the sound of bone cracking. Another step, and Joe's knee makes a thick popping noise as it slips awkwardly to the side, broken and out of joint, and the whole leg crumples. 

Nux stares, wide-eyed, with his hands still in formation. His heart jolts in his chest over and over again, hot and cold and fearful like he has never known fear before in his half-life.

Crumbling piece by piece until he breaks upon the sand, Joe falls, cracking open and rotting. He is all black and gore inside, already in such a state of decay that he should have been long dead. Tumors breathe and hiss angrily where they grow from splintering bones and cling to bloated, discolored organs. Blood and pus and black ooze roll from Joe's open, dislocated jaw until his face folds into nothing and the wretched body deflates and sinks. 

Half-life! Half-life! The voice on the wind shrieks victoriously. You live again while he rots! He is half-life! You are not! Half-life! He rots! He has always been rot! A breeding bed of tumors! Ash and blood in your mouth! Spit him out!

The sand flows over the mess until it is nothing but a dark stain and some twisted bones rising up to salute the bloody sky.

The only reason Nux does not scream is because he doesn't believe he can. His lungs are crushed under the wild, painful thrashing of his heart, which feels so large in his chest that he is afraid that it will burst. But he cannot calm it and does not want to. The Immortan is dead! Dead! And a death more horrible than that suffered by any one of The Wretched.

He turns and runs. 

He rots, he rots! The false god is half-life!  

He does not make it very far. He cannot breathe. There's a wheezing sound coming from him, practically screaming, but it can't be screaming because he can't breathe. It must be Larry and Barry. It must be. They must finally be turning on him, choking him, because this must be what death really is because The Immortan was a half-life and a liar, he lied, he lied!

Nux collapses and believes that he will split open and melt like Joe too, like rot and nothing, like toxic smoke blown away on the wind… but he does not.

Coughing into the sand, Nux hears a strange gait of steps on the shifting ground. A brief pain pulls at his neck, like a string running through his throat, and it pulls pulls pulls until suddenly the pain is gone and he can take a deep, easy breath, unrestricted for the first time since he was too small to reach the pedals in a car. His papery lungs expand and feel strong again. The thrashing of his heart eases, and Nux dares to look up.

Some sort of thing is standing in the sand, with blood on its feet and mouth. What is it? Somehow he knows that it is his own blood that drips freely from this creature. Nux thinks it must be an animal, but it's so much bigger than any lizard or rat or bird. It has fur like a rat and four legs like a rat and a long, pointed face like a rat, but… it simply is not a rat. It stands tall and strong. Its fur gleams like oil under the chrome sky. And its eyes, blue like the deepest and hottest fires of an engine, are watching him.

What will you be?

Its mouth opens, full of sharp teeth as white as sun-bleached bone. Two strange, wormy things, like maggots but as big as his thumbs— no, bigger— fall from its mouth, and land wetly in the sand. They wriggle, alive and terrible, until the not-rat-thing kicks dirt over them with its clawed feet.

He recognizes those strange maggot-things.

Larry and Barry.

He wants to reach for them and their familiarity in this uncanny landscape, but the not-rat-thing steps forward with its long legs and leaves Larry and Barry behind in the bloody sand. It looks at him, tall and proud, and lowers its head so that it is face-to-face with him.

The long, narrow mouth opens much, much closer to his face than it had been before, and breath that smells like fresh aqua cola hitting dirt washes over his face, and fire-blue eyes burn.

"Wake up, War Boy." 

Nux isn't sure what's happening. He thinks he's dead, at first, because he can hear the holy rumble of a shine engine, and his skin feels like he's been watered like a green thing, and the cool darkness makes breathing easier. And he can breathe, really breathe, and his neck hurts a bit where Larry and Barry were but their pressure is gone and it's blissful to breathe without them.

Not what he expected from Valhalla.

He drifts back to sleep, then back to consciousness again, and then to sleep, until he settles into a heavy dose somewhere in between. His blood feels pretty damn guzzy, like it hasn’t in a long time, maybe hasn’t ever, but he's tired . He didn't know there would be tired in Valhalla. But this drifting sort of sleep is pleasant, like he might float away, and if Valhalla is less chrome-plated and more of this, just drifting to the sound of an engine and the feeling of water and the ease of his own cleaned-out air pipe, he won't be upset.

… His skin feels a little odd, though.

But the dream-world that was Valhalla-or-not rushes to him like the inhalation of thick smoke and he lurches forward so suddenly that he is in motion, on his feet and practically flying through a small space, as small as his cot.

Bright sunlight and dust sting his eyes, so he doesn't see what his hand lands on, but he instinctively grips it, fingers curling around something soft. He pulls back when he senses danger, just enough instinct left to preserve his own life, and whatever he grabbed comes with him. It’s heavy, he’s set off-balance, and he tumbles onto his rump, cracking the back of his head against something hard.

“Ah— ow—” he hisses, wincing. That’ll leave a lump for sure. Does he hear bullets?

Blinking the sand and the pain out of his eyes only reveals more confusion, for sitting atop him is Immortan Joe’s prized breeder.